#quentin travers

[buffster]

Checkpoint (BTVS 5.12)

This is part of my ongoing Buffyverse Project, where I write notes/meta for every episode in an attempt to better understand the characters and themes of the shows. You can find the BTVS list here and the ATS list here. Gifs are not mine.

This episode is when sick-of-this-shit Buffy really takes shape. We'll be with her for awhile. Anyone else want to punch anyone who's mean to her?

To start, Joyce's illness is taking a toll. Buffy's still in this-is-temporary mode, barely holding it together but not too worried because her mom will be back soon.

Then The Watcher's Council and Quentin Travers return, demanding she be tested to see if she's "worthy" of the information on Glory. They want to exert their power over the situation and threaten to deport Giles if she doesn't comply. I hate the way they come in and begin criticizing Giles' shop as a way to gain control. Ugh.

We learn that Glory's brain-sucking habit is necessary to her sanity and survival. The minions leave her for too long and we find her shaky and out of it. They tell her she needs to use The Key soon. Glory tries to get Ben to help, but he seems to be in denial about the situation and just pretends she doesn't exist. Glory decides to pay Buffy a visit and warn her that she better hand it over. The moment when Dawn comes downstairs and Buffy is desperately trying to get her out of there was so tense.

More Spuffy development this season. I hate the toxicity in Spike cutting Buffy down in an attempt to pull her closer (especially when it works next season). He makes some nasty comments about her losing boyfriends.

It was a very interesting move to trust Joyce and Dawn with him. Eight episodes ago he was trying to get his chip out and you were ready to kill him. I can't decide if she instinctively trusts him or if she's just so beaten down and desperate that she takes the risk. She still promises to pay if he succeeds and stake him if he doesn't, which he says is getting old.

A new threat emerges with The Knights of Byzantium, an ancient order sworn to stop The Beast. They'll do anything to destroy The Key. They represent a new foil for Buffy as they are humans choosing to kill the one for the many, a move she is too idealistic to make.

All this boils over and we get sick-of-this-shit Buffy. I love when she sticks it to the Council.

Buffy: Power. I have it. They don't. This bothers them.

Buffy demands she receive the information and that Giles gets retroactive pay (hello, Buffy? Pay yourself!). She points out that without her they're irrelevant sitting ducks waiting for Glory to end the world.

The gang cheers. We learn Glory is a god. I feel like this was a gasp moment back in the day.

Character Notes:

Anya Jenkins: She has a story ready for the Watchers. Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins. Born on the fourth of July.

Buffy Summers: His sweater is still under the couch. Talk about an abrupt departure. We get some interesting grief after he leaves. Not much heartbreak, but grief from everyone over losing someone that was part of the team.

Joyce Summers: She likes Passions. She finds it easy to get along with pretty much anyone.

Spike: One of the council seems attracted to him and says she wrote her thesis on him. He likes Passions.

[isevery0nehereverystoned]

The last four of the major arcana are done ✅ whew (full disclosure Dusk’s outfit inspired by the AF Vandervorst 2016 spring/summer collection)

[buffyangelscreens]

[lightdancer1]

A note on my take on the Watchers' Council and Quentin Travers in my fics:

It might seem that next to some, or the actual show, that I make the Council a bit better and more heroic than it was in the original canon or make arguments on its behalf. As I see it, in the canon the Council kept humanity around for at minimum tens of thousands of years with its crude and brutal system that kept itself intact until Buffy Summers and company took a great big whack at it and brought the entire edifice crumbling down.

That means that portraying them as entirely incompetent doesn't work. I should also note that the Council when written in its POVs is written from itself, because the bits where it *isn't* a lot of times match 1:1 with the aspects and vibes of it in the actual show.

Quentin Travers I do write as an 'I could reform this but there's only so much you can do' guy where this contrasts with the kind of sweeping power he has in other contexts, because it is always a self-serving lie and is always meant to be. Nobody sheds a tear when the First Evil wipes out the Council, except for all the books.

I do also have them taking the appropriate reactions to my use of Dark Willow as a very early potential theme and reacting like the heroes of a 'prevent the apocalypse even if it's a person' series who rely on moral ambiguity would. Namely that they actually repeatedly try to prevent the prospect of Willow reaching her full power by having her assassinated. Their efforts fail and end up spurring the very thing they hate, and give her a permanent grudge against the Council.

The Council also sees long before any of Willow's friends do that she has enormous power, is unstable in wielding it, and are ultimately entirely right in that this makes her an extremely dangerous and unstable person who can make that everyone's problem, not just hers.

And at least a part of their dislike of and distrust of Buffy and her friends is realizing belatedly that they might be the architects of the demise of their own order and reacting like all conservatives, trying to stand atop history and yell 'Stop' only to realize too late they're Judge Doom hit by their own creation.

Just as I make a careful point never to validate Tara's family under any circumstances in their views of her or their treatment of her, so is it also clear that whatever the Council's rhetoric that it both lies and operates in the real world as a vanguardist security-state cult, with very deliberate parallels to the all-encompassing power of the Initiative (whose infrastructure didn't spontaneously materialize and who have a messier path to getting there because evil vs. evil is always a fun thing to write) or the Pandora Project of Season 11.

That the supposed leaders of the forces of good are functionally very similar to the two iterations of fascism built on demonizing literal demons and witch hunts for literal 'fire from heaven and turn you into a frog' witches is 100% intentional and by design.

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

The Countdown to Happiness - Day 14

Picture: Panorama Helsinki / Finland - Dom und Parlamentsplatz (by   tap5a)

From November 24th on, I will post one chapter of

“We only do this for Fergus!”

[From @outlanderpromptexchange - Prompt 3: Fake Relationship AU: Jamie Fraser wants to formally adopt his foster son Fergus, but his application will probably not be approved… unless he is married and/or in a committed relationship. Enter one Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp (Randall?) to this story]

every day until it’s “Happy End”. Yes, you might not believe it but there is a Happy End coming around New Year’s Eve / New Year :) I hope you enjoy reading this little story (again).

[coraniaid]

The thing about Kendra is that ... okay. There is a version of the show in my head in which both meeting and then failing to save Kendra are huge, pivotal moments in Buffy's life. They should both have had a huge impact on her. Kendra is the first other Slayer Buffy ever meets, the embodiment of everything Buffy has been told a Slayer should be, a challenge to Buffy's sense of her self as "the one and only Chosen" [as, of all people, Faith will put it five years later].

Becoming (Part 1) even teases the idea that Kendra's death will be a turning point in Buffy's story. "Even if you see them coming, you're not ready for the big moments," Whistler narrates in voice over as Buffy rushes back to the library. "Nobody asks for their life to change [...] but it does," he says, as Buffy finds Kendra lying dead on the floor and tearfully takes her hand. "It's what you do afterwards that counts," he tells us. The framing here is pretty clear: what are we meant to do but assume that Kendra's death is a "big moment" that will change Buffy's life forever?

I don't think I can imagine writing a version of Buffy who isn't fundamentally changed by this moment. Who isn't thinking about Kendra when she takes the bus out of Sunnydale, or when Angel comes back from hell next season, or when Drusilla comes back to Sunnydale three years later. Who isn't reminded of her almost every time she sees Faith: who isn't thinking about her when she insists to her skeptical Watcher and her friends that, no matter what, this time she's going to find a way to save her fellow Slayer. Who isn't thinking about what Kendra told her about being raised by her Watcher and never having anything resembling a normal life when she confronts Quentin Travers in Helpless or Checkpoint. Who isn't thinking at least a little bit about Kendra when she complains in The Gift how hard it is to live in a world where "everything gets stripped away". Who isn't missing her dead friend all through Season 7, and wondering whether Kendra -- who read the handbook and knew all the rules -- would have done a better job leading the Potentials than she could.

Only, well. Hand on heart, I don't think this is an accurate description of what canonically happens on screen after Season 2. In the version of the show that I like to think about, Kendra is important and her life and her death matter enormously. But in the version of the show that was actually filmed and aired ... well, like Whistler says, it's what you do afterwards that counts. And what the show does after Becoming is to almost immediately forget Kendra ever existed. Nobody but Cordelia ever says her name out loud (and even that's just a single throwaway line to get the audience up to speed about Faith). Buffy never mentions where "Mr Pointy" came from to anyone; she never mentions Kendra to Faith or Dawn or any of the Potentials. Kendra doesn't show up in dreams or prophetic visions; we don't see her alive in the alternate reality of The Wish or trapped in a clinic alongside 'the real' Buffy in Normal Again; the First Evil never bothers to take on her appearance. The closest we ever get to coming back to Buffy finding her body in the library -- that "big moment" that was going to change Buffy's life -- are a couple of lines in Dead Man's Party where Joyce and Oz note that the police no longer suspect Buffy of Kendra's murder ("oh, good," says Buffy, "that was such a drag").

I can't imagine writing a version of the show where Kendra didn't matter, but I don't have to: that's the version that actually got written.

And yeah, that's infuriating -- like so much else about how Kendra was treated by the show -- but I think if you start talking about how much Kendra's death means to Buffy you do need to acknowledge that you're not talking about the version of the show that everybody else actually watched. Kendra really isn't haunting the narrative in any meaningful way. I wouldn't be surprised if most casual fans of the show don't remember she existed. For that matter, I genuinely don't think some of the people writing for the show in its last few seasons remembered she existed. It almost feels like an insult to Bianca Lawson to pretend that the show that treated her and the character she played with so little respect actually always intended her to have this huge posthumous importance (and ... I guess ... just kept forgetting to invite her back?).

Even her last name -- Kendra Young, we were told after the show ended -- feels like a bit of an odd afterthought. One of the few things the show told us about Kendra was that she didn't remember her parents and didn't have a last name. But, well. Why would the writers of the show suddenly start caring about little things like that?

[subtextnatural]

Dean Winchester is like Buffy Summers if Buffy was Chosen at age 4 & her father was Quentin Travers & they had baby Dawn from the start 😭

[herinsectreflection]

But You're Just A Girl (Helpless)

The test that Buffy undergoes in this episode – in which she is stripped of her powers, locked inside a house, and forced to fight a mentally unstable vampire – is named in the script as The Cruciamentum. Giles describes it as “an archaic exercise in cruelty”, and it’s difficult to think of a description that could be more accurate.

The word Cruciamentum is an invented declension that roughly translates from Latin as “result of torture”. Quentin Travers – making his first appearance here as the Head of the Watcher’s Council – defends the practice as a necessary rite of passage, meant to make a Slayer stronger, but this reasoning falls apart under scrutiny The scenario is so heavily weighted against the Slayer, robbing her not only of her powers but the knowledge that she is being robbed at all, that it makes more sense to view the Cruciamentum not as a test, but as a method of control, designed to kill off Slayers that reach adulthood and so gain more independence from the Council. At the very least, it demonstrates the Council’s control over the Slayer, holding the implicit threat of taking away her powers again over her head for the rest of her life. As is the case with many unjust systems, the cruelty is the point.

The Cruciamentum is the Council’s most clear and obvious cruelty, but it is not by any means their only one. Cruelty is their origin story, as we see in Get It Done how they forcibly created the first Slayer through metaphorical rape. It is baked into the central idea of One Girl In All The World – a system which relies on the deaths of an infinite chain of young women. Its current setup, with one Watcher in the field and apparently dozens sitting safely away in England, leads to an inevitable cruelty of indifference that Giles calls out in this episode. There are cruelties of incompetence – failing to alert the field about the firing of Gwendolyn Post, sending the underqualified Wesley to Sunnydale. But perhaps their most impactful cruelty is also their most subtle. It came the moment that Buffy Summers, sitting outside her school in 1997, was called to be a Slayer. This act not only changed Buffy’s life, but caused an irreparable crack in her psyche. It splits her perceived self into two component parts – The Girl and The Slayer – twin selves that she spends seven seasons trying to reconcile.

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[gone2soon-rip]

HARRIS YULIN (1937-Died June 10th 2025,at 87).American actor who appeared in over a hundred film and television series roles, such as Scarface (1983), Ghostbusters II (1989), Clear and Present Danger (1994), Looking for Richard (1996), Bean (1997), The Hurricane (1999), Training Day (2001), and Frasier which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 1996.In his many tv appearances,he has played NSA Director Roger Stanton,in 24.As Quentin Travers,in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.As crime boss Jerome Belasco,in Frasier,and as Admiral Aamin Marritzer,in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.And as Buddy Dieker,in Ozark.Harris Yulin - Wikipedia

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Monday, April 14th

RILEY: Not much for bench-warming. BUFFY: No, you made the squad. You ... threw that vampire like he was a ... teeny-weeny little vampire. RILEY: (grinning) Hey, wanna go again? Come on, I bet this place is just teeming with aerodynamic vampires.

~~Out of My Mind~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Standards (Cordelia, OFC, PG) by badly_knitted

The Slayer and the Suits (Crossover w/ Scandal; Faith, T) by Diary

Standards (Cordelia, OFC, K) by badly-knitted

[Chaptered Fiction]

The Blood Of A Slayer, Chapters 1-2 (Giles/Buffy, Ethan, Willow, Tara, Xander, Anya, Quentin Travers, Spike, Dawn, E) by Cosmic__Cowgirl

Blood Moon, Chapters 1-28 (Crossover w/ Teen Wolf; Buffy, Spike, Andrew, Gunn, T) by Anonymous

Catch a Falling Star, Chapter 1 (Crossover w/ Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Dawn, T) by HMaxMarius

No Rest for the Wicked, Chapter 1 (Faith/Buffy, Spike, Riley, Joyce, Giles, Oz, Angel, Willow, Tara, Unrated) by TargaryenPug

excerpt from my weslah fic (Chapter 1) (Wesley/Lilah, Angel, Spike, M) by welcometocaritas

Sojourns in Heaven, Chapter 3 (Buffy/Spike, Willow, Xander, Angel, Anya, Dawn, Tara, NC-17) by elements

The Plan, Chapter 5 (Buffy/Spike, Giles, Willow, Xander, Joyce, NC-17) by NotYourGrave

Faith Around & Find Out, Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, The Trio, Scoobies, Clem, Faith, Riley, Sam Finn, NC-17) by Kenijo

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork: I drew the funny (The Trio, SFW) by garscrucible

Artwork: Spuffy (Spike/Buffy, SFW) by frenchublog

Artwork: Bangel (Buffy/Angel, SFW) by danilizano

Images: Happy Birthday, SMG! (Sarah Michelle Gellar, SFW) by cassiline

Artwork: Spuffy (Spike/Buffy, SFW) by frenchublog

[Community Announcements]

Multi-Fandom: The 2025 WIP Big Bang & WIP Reverse Bang Are Open For Sign-Ups! by wipbigbang

[Fandom Discussions]

I want to do a bandillow chucking-buffy-out-of-her-house rewrite sooo badly. by camellcat

Riley running from his bad choices to go play hero, then blaming it on Buffy and using it as an ultimatum to punish her for her lack of emotional vulnerability, is just such a wild fucking twist. by rookrock

Bizarre Takes I’ve Actually Heard About Riley Finn, Pt. 1 by riley-summers

In Defense of Queerplatonic Spuffy by spangelmybeloved

Just a rant on the Buffy fandom and their views and treatment of the comics. by lilyginnyblackv2

interested in Amy at the Bronze and take me somewhere nice by coraniaid

Is buffy the vampire slayer worth watching? by crunchycrystals

Lorne best moments? by RuggedLove

Sunnydale High visit by Enchanted_Pancakes

Faith Appreciation 🖤 by mhu11y_

Makeup Department by authenticriver

What’s a moment in the Buffyverse that you misunderstood or didn’t get until several rewatches later by Taras_Willowverse

I just finished season 5.... by Adorable_Hope6904

Happy Birthday to the Queen of our hearts SMG! by Say_it_how_it_is_87

Why didn't Cordelia get any visions for what happened in Sunnydale even though Doyle got a vision of what happened on Thanksgiving in Buffy Season 4? by jdpm1991

Why do people dislike BtVS 4x05 ‘Beer Bad’? by Taras_Willowverse

If you were Buffy, would you have left, too, after S2? by SparklingStars82

Buffy Is never scary but season 6 episode 3.... by darkvixenofthemoon

Why do you love Anya ✅🐰🏧 by SparklingStars82

Why doesn’t Angel seek out a permanent soul? by AccordingReference3

You're the Big Bad, how do you defeat the Slayer? by NobodySpecialSCL

Cordy/Jasmine Timeline? (Angel spoilers) by cicigal8

Hated how mad they were in Graduation Day at Angel lol by scifi_is_my_escape

Not Buffy leaving Riley on the operating table 💀 by Musanot

In honor of Sarah's 48th birthday, what's your favorite Buffy quote? by SeaBassAHo-20

03x01 - "Anne" by gebbethine

[Articles, Interviews, and Other News]

Podcast: Touched S7 E20 by Buffy and the Art of Story

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

[petit-atelier-de-poesie]

NOTE DE LECTURE : L'oeil du paon. Lilia Hassaine. 2021

Un très bon premier roman de cette jeune autrice qui m'avait fait de l'oeil (du paon) dès sa sortie en poche. Et je ne suis pas déçue.  Cette histoire ressemble à un conte, ou un roman d'apprentissage, où l'on entre par petites touches, ou petits pas sans savoir vraiment où l'on va, un peu comme notre héroïne. C'est aussi un regard en kaléidoscope de notre société, superficielle et décadente, qu'elle essaie de donner à travers son objectif photographique pour l'héroïne, et ses tableaux délicats, portraits et natures mortes, pour la romancière.  Finalement, et au-delà des apparences et faux-semblants, c'est bien l'orgueil qui est le maitre mot de chacun des malheureux protagonistes de cette fable : Héra photographe aveuglée malgré tout, son père croyant déjouer la malédiction de la mort des paons, Agathe et Laurent chacun regardant ailleurs et tentant de maintenir l'illusion de leur couple, et M. Quentin l'opticien et voyeur visionnaire.  La mort qui ouvre le roman vient également le clore ; restent les larmes à pleurer, mais qui ne viennent pas.

[isevery0nehereverystoned]

Betrayal. Gearing up for the EF anniversary event.

[sarahwatchesthings]

Part 1 here

[lightdancer1]

Speaking of that bigger discussion:

One of the elements that makes Buffy simultaneously superb when it's good and mediocre to awful when it isn't is that each of the main characters goes through very different arcs. Spike is the Anne Rice vampire, Angel is a heroic version of Konrad Curze, Buffy has the classical hero's journey, Giles is the Obi-Wan who never quite dies, Dawn is the Lovecraftian monster who's equal parts adorable and annoying (so the ultimate little sister), Xander has the reliable and unfortunately human aspects of being the normal guy who normal guys. Anya is the unrepentant murderous sadist who's charismatic and effective with her powers and a dork among dorks without them.

Willow, OTOH, has the arc that is at the most radically divergent with everyone else. Everyone else to a point fits in neatly with the genre conventions here, Willow fits straight into the DC or Marvel kind of setting of higher-powered superpowered being who had to be downplayed in Season 7 for the same reasons the DCAU struggled to write Superman. Everyone else leads a horror-comedy where the two poles of their lives grind against each other like icebergs in the Arctic or Antarctic Sea.

Willow lives an arc rooted in a much more direct superhero element, but where other people might expect Superman or Batman (and Angel is closer to Batman than anyone here, hence the Konrad Curze joke), she is unknown to herself living Jean Grey going Dark Phoenix and being both easily forgiven and avoiding the Dark Phoenix problem thanks to the comics of being given a pass by her actions being completely separated from her.

Each of the main characters in Buffy has at least three major genres overlapping and shaping their lives. Giles, Faith, Buffy, the Potentials turned Slayers, and the monsters they fight, as well as Tara and Amy Madison are all living the life of urban fantasy, deeply rooted in that old order as direct embodiments of its ideals (The Master and Kakistos for the villains, Kendra and Quentin Travers for the heroes), or rebelling against it (Buffy and Tara), or going down the hero to villain path, either with a way back or not (Faith and Amy Madison).

Xander is living the most direct Kolchak the Night Stalker kind of urban fantasy life. Perfectly normal dude in a world of demonic monsters out there trying to erase all human life and even demonic life as well, who goes out there to fight the good fight.

And then there's Willow, whose life is straight out of the X-Men arcs.....including the one where the hero went nuts and tried to kill a bunch of people and had to be brought down by her own side. As characters in a work don't know the genre they're in, this is IMO the ultimate reason some form of Dark Willow was always inevitable. Willow being who she is and what she is, with her brilliance and all, was pretty much assured to go straight into magic as soon as she knew it existed. With her brilliance she would grasp power without understanding precision or all the nuances of using it.

Insofar as the characters know they're living any kind of genre experience, it's urban fantasy. All the trappings of modern life with vampires and dragons in the shadowy alleys of a modern urban region. So when one of them is living an iconic superhero arc and perhaps under the impression it's one of the more classical goofy Silver Age ones, failure to understand that or how swiftly things go wrong is perhaps the biggest single reason why Willow's path to the dark side, even temporarily, is likely to happen.

Almost nobody human would take access to the kind of power she discovers she has well. As she's the most powerful sorceress on Earth, at minimum, her capacity for fuckups are correspondingly bigger. And as long as her friends just thought of how cute she was it was never going to occur to them that her small fuckups which are humongous deals by the standards of other sorcerers might one day be less handwaved and funny and more 'bring the brown pants' tier terrifying.

Admittedly this is why 2020s me likes Willow even more than 2000s me did, woman gains enormous power but is entirely human about wielding it is my jam, writing-wise, and it makes writing Willow a lot more fun as she's one of the few canon characters that comes closest to the kind of vibe I like to work with.

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

Chapters: 29/?

Fandom: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon, Outlander (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death

Relationships: Claire Beauchamp/Jamie Fraser

Characters: Claire Beauchamp, Jamie Fraser, Fergus Fraser, Jenny Murray, Ian Murray, Sandy Travers, Frank Randall, Quentin Lambert Beauchamp, Ned Gowan

Additional Tags: Berlin, The Frasers in Prussia, Germany

Summary:

“We only do this for Fergus!” is a short Outlander Fan Fiction story and my contribution to the Outlander Prompt Exchange (Prompt 3: Fake Relationship AU: Jamie Fraser wants to formally adopt his foster son Fergus, but his application will probably not be approved… unless he is married and/or in a committed relationship. Enter one Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp (Randall?) to this story) @outlanderpromptexchange

[quentindouchetphotographie]

Grégoire Munster/Louis - Ford Puma Rally1 - SS10 Monte-Carlo 2024.

A travers les paysages du Vercors pendant la SS10 Les Nonières > Chichilianne 1.

(27 Janvier 2024).

A Julie…

© Quentin Douchet.